John Janaro's Blog, page 44

“Requiem Aeternam”

ALL SOULS DAY.
“Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine, et lux perpetua luceat eis. Requiescant in pace. / Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon them. May they rest in peace.”

“Today we remember those who have walked before us, in the hope of meeting them, of reaching the place where we will find the love that created us and awaits us: the love of the Father” (Pope Francis).

[Image: Fra Angelico]

All Saints Day 2023

“I had a vision of a great multitude, which no one could count, from every nation, race, people, and tongue. They stood before the throne and before the Lamb, wearing white robes and holding palm branches in their hands. They cried out in a loud voice: ‘Salvation comes from our God, who is seated on the throne, and from the Lamb’” (Revelation 7:9).

Pope Francis Concludes Synod and Entrusts the World to Mary

This month of October 2023 has been full of events—both foreseen and unforeseen—that have summoned Pope Francis to continue meeting his enormous pastoral responsibilities as Successor of Saint Peter with great love and courage. 

On Sunday, the month-long gathering for Part 1 of the Synod of Bishops was concluded harmoniously and in an atmosphere of fraternal charity. One should recognize the fact that the private nature of the deliberations—and the counsel given to participants not to engage with journalists in individual, day-by-day assessments of the Synod’s work—were intended to help to facilitate an open and frank dialogue within the Synod’s sessions. The Synod needed a communal environment that was free from the distractions and pressures of over-politicized small partisan interest groups whose hopes (or fears) about this or that particular issue tend to dominate press coverage and social media chatter. To accept the need for this privacy was not a capitulation to a lack of transparency, but a gesture of trust in the Holy Spirit to guide the delegates gathered together in the Synod, so that they might grow in faith and love, and engage in prayerful discernment the contributions and concerns expressed by countless people over the past year within the context of local Christian communities. All the questions, listening, dialogue, and discernment are in the service of a deepening of mature faith and a more ardent missionary openness among the whole of the People of God.

We must always remember that Jesus Christ is the Head of the Church and that He will not lead her astray. Living the Church in a “synodol” way in the 21st century is a daunting but essential task that needs to grow with time in order to allow the truth of the Gospel to shine more brightly and be perceived as truly incarnate in the unprecedentedly vast array of diverse cultures and histories of all the peoples in the now 1.3 billion member Catholic Church throughout the world. For this meeting to be fruitful, it was necessary for everyone to listen and contribute in an orderly way to an experience of “walking together” toward Christ and discerning the voice of the Holy Spirit. It was a matter of recognizing that we share the same faith within a variety of human and personal differences, religious “styles” and cultural forms. 

It was also a matter of making space to encounter people with difficulties and particular problems in their relationship with the Church. This is not easy or comfortable, but here again we need to remember the One to whom we belong. We need not fear listening to anyone, because the Lord is present with His Church, and His mercy will empower us to discern what people are saying from their hearts, what they want to offer, what are their struggles and sufferings, what we share and how we can journey together, how we can accompany them, and guide them to discover more fully the light of the Gospel, and how we can co-suffer with them and enter more profoundly into the freedom of the healing, forgiving, and transforming love of Jesus — the Word made flesh who knows all our wounds from within, and encompasses all our sufferings in His own inexhaustible Crucified Love.

The “miracle” of a deeply faithful Catholic people witnessing the Gospel of Christ’s salvation with a conviction that comes from their own hearts (with its accompanying joy), and living out that conviction in all the environments of this enormous world with the love that comes from God and reaches out with unquenchable ardor and the Spirit’s power to make us “all things to all people” — this is a Church that “walks together,” not only because we can “help one another” but because our identity consists in being one body in Christ. We are Christ’s Church, and we must be faithful to our vocation in Him. As the Second Vatican Council teaches, “the Church is in Christ like a sacrament or as a sign and instrument both of a very closely knit union with God and of the unity of the whole human race” (Lumen Gentium 1). We must pray to remember who we are, and to remain with Jesus in all times and circumstances, in whatever challenges and trials we face in today’s world.  

The Synods of October 2023 and 2024 will be blessed even if they don’t go “smoothly,” even if some methods and procedures are found inadequate, or are improved upon or changed in the future. We must, of course, pray for all these gifts that God wants to give us to meet the particularly intense drama and the urgency of our time; we pray with trust because we know the greatness of God’s love for us, and thus also for our neighbors, for everyone. The effort of the Synod itself is already prayer that seeks to know how the Lord wants to use us, His sons and daughters, in countless ways for serving His burning Heart’s desire to light fires in every human heart.

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Beyond all these challenges, the Pope is being called to stand firm yet again in the face of the latest flare-up of the longstanding violence between Israel and Palestine, and violence and death all over the world. On Friday, the Pope consecrated the whole world to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. Once again he has appealed to the tenderness of the Mother of Jesus. We must all join in (some excerpts below) to pray for these terrible wars to end, for those who are being dehumanized by the violence they perpetrate, and for all who suffer…

Excerpts from Pope Francis’s Prayer to Mary at the conclusion of last Friday’s “Day of Prayer and Fasting for Peace”:

“Mary,  look at us! We stand here before you. You are our Mother, and you know our struggles and our hurts. Queen of Peace, you suffer with us and for us, as you see so many of your children suffering from the conflicts and wars that are tearing our world apart…. Turn your eyes of mercy towards our human family, which has strayed from the path of peace, preferred Cain to Abel and lost the ability to see each other as brothers and sisters dwelling in a common home. Intercede for our world, in such turmoil and great danger. Teach us to cherish and care for life – each and every human life! – and to repudiate the folly of war, which sows death and eliminates the future.

Mary, how many times have you come, urging prayer and repentance. Yet, caught up in our own needs and distracted by the things of this world, we have turned a deaf ear to your appeal. In your love for us, you never abandon us, Mother. Lead us by the hand. Lead us by the hand and bring us to conversion; help us once again to put God first. Help us to preserve unity in the Church and to be artisans of communion in our world. Make us realize once more the importance of the role we play; strengthen our sense of responsibility for the cause of peace as men and women called to pray, worship, intercede and make reparation for the whole human race.

“By ourselves, Mother, we cannot succeed; without your Son, we can do nothing. But you bring us back to Jesus, who is our Peace. Therefore, Mother of God and our Mother, we come before you and we seek refuge in your Immaculate Heart. Mother of mercy, we appeal for mercy! Queen of Peace, we appeal for peace! Touch the hearts of those imprisoned by hatred; convert those who fuel and foment conflict. Dry the tears of children – at this hour, so many are weeping! – be present to those who are elderly and alone; strengthen the wounded and the sick; protect those forced to leave their lands and their loved ones; console the crestfallen; awaken new hope.

“To you we entrust and consecrate our lives and every fibre of our being, all that we possess and all that we are, forever. To you we consecrate the Church, so that in her witness to the love of Jesus before the world, she may be a sign of harmony and an instrument of peace. To you we consecrate our world, to you we consecrate especially those countries and regions at war.”

Chiara “Luce” Badano: Guided by the Radiant Light of Christ

Today, though it’s a Sunday, can still be marked with celebration of Blessed Chiara “Luce” Badano (1971-1990), a very precious “spiritual friend” to me and many others in our time.

Chiara Badano was diagnosed with osteosarcoma at the age of 18. An active teenager full of life and aspirations, Chiara hoped to be cured of the cancer and underwent all the standard medical treatments of thirty years ago. But above all she was committed to God's will, and she knew that in the embrace of the crucified Christ, even her suffering was endowed with meaning for the salvation of the world. She offered her powerlessness and pain in union with "Jesus Abandoned," and endured everything with a transfigured joy in the awareness that the mystery of the Cross was at work in her. 

Near the end, she said, "I have nothing left except my heart, but with my heart I can still love!"

Do We “Get Used To” War?

Most people don’t want to “get used to war,” but it happens. We get used to it in one way or another. There is the temptation to try to protect ourselves from the flood of “information” about the evils in our world by becoming more harsh, more habituated to disappointment, more cynical about the dignity and value of human life. And yet, our hidden sadness only grows deeper.
The truth is that we all have too much war on the frontiers of our own hearts, and we feel powerless in the struggle against it. What can we do?
We can beg for the mercy of God, and ask God for the courage to take the next step toward peace—within ourselves, our homes, our communities, our nations, and among all the peoples of the world.

Antonio Claret: Hunger and Thirst For God’s Love

October 24 is the celebration of the 19th century Catalan bishop and missionary Saint Antonio Maria Claret. Today’s issue of Magnificat offers a rich meditation from his Autobiography, from which I cite this excerpt that especially struck me. 
We can find the “hidden treasure” of God’s love “by asking and longing for love continually and incessantly, without ever failing to ask or without getting tired of asking, even though it delays in the coming. It is necessary to pray to Jesus and Mary for it, and especially to ask our Father in heaven for it through the merits of Jesus and his Blessed Mother, and to be most sure that our heavenly Father will send the Holy Spirit with this love to him who prays in this manner. [We must] hunger and thirst for this love, just as he who is really and truly hungry and thirsty in his body always thinks of how he can satisfy his hunger, and to this end asks anyone who might be in a position to help him. It is thus that I am determined to seek for love with ardent desires and aspirations.”
~Saint Antonio Maria Claret (1807-1870)

Saint John Paul II and “New Media”

October 22 is ordinarily the feast of Pope Saint John Paul II. This year it falls on a Sunday, which takes liturgical precedence. Still, it is a day to celebrate his outstanding legacy, and implore his ongoing intercession.
One of the last major statements that John Paul II published in his 26 year papacy was an Apostolic Letter on the “Rapid Development of Communications Media” (January 24, 2005). Those of us who remember him know the powerful use he made of transportation and communications technology at the end of the Second Millennium. His great pilgrimages all over the world were already further “extended” by means of broadcast television. In his final months, however, he also saw that communications media were on the cusp of further expansion in ways that would form new “spaces” of human interaction, raise new challenges, and offer new possibilities for evangelization and human development.
Without underestimating the magnitude of the changes which few of us foresaw in 2005, John Paul II took the opportunity to exhort us all — one more time — to “be not afraid.” His hope for humanity was always magnanimous, not because he was naive about the extent of wickedness and corruption in the world, but because he knew the always-greater power of Christ the Redeemer, who is the center of the universe and the Lord of history. John Paul II taught our generation to adhere to Jesus Christ, to His love and mercy, and in Him to engage the whole scope of human experience with confidence that Christ is the meaning and fulfillment of everything. His grace and wisdom make it possible to face new challenges in bearing witness to His Gospel and upholding the dignity of every human person in an ambivalent world that continues to change in so many confusing ways.
“The world of communications … is capable of unifying humanity and transforming it into — as it is commonly referred to — ‘a global village’. The communications media have acquired such importance as to be the principal means of guidance and inspiration for many people in their personal, familial, and social behavior. We are dealing with a complex problem, because the culture itself, prescinding from its content, arises from the very existence of new ways to communicate with hitherto unknown techniques and vocabulary.

“Ours is an age of global communication in which countless moments of human existence are either spent with, or at least confronted by, the different processes of the mass media. I limit myself to mentioning the formation of personality and conscience, the interpretation and structuring of affective relationships, the coming together of the educative and formative phases, the elaboration and diffusion of cultural phenomena, and the development of social, political and economic life.

“The mass media can and must promote justice and solidarity according to an organic and correct vision of human development, by reporting events accurately and truthfully, analyzing situations and problems completely, and providing a forum for different opinions. An authentically ethical approach to using the powerful communication media must be situated within the context of a mature exercise of freedom and responsibility, founded upon the supreme criteria of truth and justice.”

How Can We Learn to Give and Receive Mercy?

Jesus said, “Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful” (Luke 6:36). The need for mercy presses itself upon us in these days, as the clouds of war darken the skies all around us. War should remind us that we are all broken and conflicted within ourselves, and in our daily relationships with one another. Jesus tells us to “be merciful” to one another, but it’s so difficult. How can we learn to give and receive mercy?

Sometimes it seems like we're trying to put "mercy" in a box and dole it out according to our own measure. This is an effort that cannot succeed, and it's just as well because our measure is so meager.

The mercy of other people is at best a sign and an instrument of the ineffable, overflowing mercy of God. We must turn to Him, beg for His mercy, and ask Him for the grace to be drawn by His love so that we will adhere to Him and trust in His mercy.

I beg to remember His abiding love every day, to remain in Him, to trust in His mercy. He knows me. In His mercy He knows the undying thirst of my soul; He knows my heart's longing in a way that I don't even begin to understand. I pray that I might trust in Him to lead me to my destiny.

I want to live this relationship with the God who makes me exist in this very moment, the God who is Infinite Love. I want to live in adoration and gratitude to the God who is all-powerful and all-good beyond my understanding, the God who is “my Father.” I must trust in His mercy to give me what I need (because I don't know what I need — I don't really know my true self). I must trust in His mercy also to break off from me the things that keep me from attaining the real fulfillment for which I have been made, which is nothing else but Him.

I need to trust His tenderness and His gentleness, which endure even when all other affirmations or consolations are absent and I feel abandoned and alone. In this solitude I can only cry out to Him and long for Him in the firm conviction that He hears me, He wants me, and that the darkness and emptiness are the vast spaces of the mystery of His inexhaustible Heart that holds me.

I know that God “wants” me because He has sent His Son (God from God, the Person of the Father’s Son, who is always with the Father and the Holy Spirit in the inexhaustible mystery of the Trinity, the Mystery of Eternal Love, the One God who is a communion of Three Persons). He has loved me—and all of us—in His Son, His “Word” who is not only “spoken to us” but who has become flesh, taken our human nature, born of the Virgin Mary to dwell with us, die for our sins, rise from the dead to create us anew. 
Jesus is God made man, our brother, and He loves us. He came into my life, my own history, first — through an event, my Baptism. And through His enduring presence in His Church, I grow in this encounter with Him—adhering to Him through faith, in the life of faith, hope, and love that His Spirit engenders within me. I believe too that He loves every person, and that this same Holy Spirit is at work in the history of every person, working within the mystery of their own freedom, drawing each of them according to a wisdom greater than our understanding. 
I can trust in God, who has taken hold of my whole life (and who embraces the life of every person) through the humanity of Jesus Christ. Jesus knows who I am, and He carries me in my suffering and accompanies me through all the depths of darkness and the experience of feeling abandoned and alone. He has made those depths His own. His mercy is His brokenness on the Cross, which He invites me to share.
The best way we can show mercy to one another is to help bear one another's burdens. We are called to open our hearts—with great humility—to the mystery of the other person's suffering. This is what we need from one another. It is the way that we can discover the presence of Jesus in every person's life, not with condescension but with a great reverence for the person.
I must welcome this person, because this person is loved by Jesus. It is the great Heart of Jesus that gives value and dignity to every person and to all our relationships. Whenever I speak to a person, my words should be shaped by the desire that Jesus come more fully to us both — to heal us in His mercy and draw us together along the paths of His mercy. I beg for the grace of this humility, for myself, for you — my dear brother or sister — for all of us. I am not “naturally” humble or welcoming of others. None of us are, in the measure that God calls us to be. He calls us to be like Him. We cannot make ourselves “like Him” by our own strength; we need the transforming power of His grace that forgives our sins, gives us a share in His life, and empowers us to live in a new way — to love one another and to be merciful to one another. We must all beg for the grace of this adoring responsiveness in love to the God who is Love.
As Pope Francis says, "We cannot trust in our own strength, but only in Jesus and in His mercy." Indeed, our strength is much too small to fathom the mercy of God. Our strength is too frail to bear His weakness on the cross.
Jesus, enable me to be merciful.
Have mercy on me.
Make me an instrument of Your mercy.
Jesus, I trust in You.

Francis: “War Erases the Future”

Words from Pope Francis’s General Audience of October 18, 2023 (courtesy of Instagram):

October 17, 2023: Praying and Fasting for “Justice and Peace”

Catholics and other Christians and people of good will around the world have been praying and fasting on this day for “justice and peace” in solidarity with all those who are suffering: terrorist victims, hostages, and their families; civilians trapped without basic necessities and under bombardment; Israelis and Palestinians; Jews, Muslims, and Christians… Here are some words from my brother and sister Catholics ‘on the ground,’ immediately involved, offering their sufferings and themselves…
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“We have offered our readiness at least to try to bring the hostages back, at least some of them, this is being attempted. It is very difficult because, for mediation, you need to have interlocutors. And at this moment, it's not possible to talk to Hamas… Am I ready for an exchange? [i.e. to voluntarily become a hostage to Hamas in exchange for the release of the other hostages.] Anything, if this can lead to freedom and bring those children back home, no problem. On my part, absolute willingness.”

~Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa,   Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem

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“We want peace because war does no one any good. We want this brutal war to end. Many people have lost their loved ones, their homes, and everything they have. We ask for justice: justice and peace. The Palestinian people also have the right to live. We ask not to punish the population because of a fanatic group. And then we ask that you pray for us.”

~Sister Nabila Saleh,   Holy Family Catholic Church, Gaza